


Acts of Contrition and Desperation

by writingfromdarkplaces



Series: Traditions and Other Ways to Mess Up Lives [3]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode Related, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-08 06:10:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7746151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingfromdarkplaces/pseuds/writingfromdarkplaces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The death of thirteen pilots on the hanger deck recalls Kara to flight instructor status and puts further strain on her complicated relationship with Lee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Acts of Contrition and Desperation

**Author's Note:**

> The funny thing is that I actually had a part of what would have been the "You Can't Go Home Again" part of this universe, but I felt like I couldn't do that without tackling "Act of Contrition" first.
> 
> Obviously, a lot of the dialogue is from the show. I modified parts of it to suit this world.

* * *

Kara was good at frakking things up. She knew that.

Her mind had been on this particular salvation—damnation—for days now, and she wasn't sure when she'd give into it, but she would. She knew that. She'd almost lost Lee when he decided to have the marriage annulled, and ever since then, despite his promise and her admitting she needed him and didn't want him to go, she couldn't help thinking she could keep him if they did consummate the marriage. Then he would have to divorce her, and she'd be back to where she was before, able to refuse to sign the papers.

He'd be hers. She could keep him. Forever.

Gods, that word scared her. Zak had said forever, they both had, but she'd lost him a month later, and it still stung.

Lee'd stepped in to fulfill the promise he'd made Zak, and she'd taken it but then ran from it, scared to lose him, too, as much as she was terrified of feeling anything for him.

* * *

When Lee was being the worst CAG in the history of CAGs, and her hands were covered with paint, she _did_ lose the battle. He'd smiled up at her from the helmet, completely and utterly adorable—and frakkable, she couldn't help thinking—and suddenly the rest of it didn't matter.

She caught his sweatshirt, dragged him close to her, and kissed him.

Startled, at first Lee didn't react, but then when he did, his hands were in her hair, and she couldn't breathe because he'd done something with his tongue that had her brain shutting off completely. She moaned, bumping the table in between them and cursing.

Lee laughed, and she figured he would have come around to really get things started if the hatch hadn't opened when it did.

They jumped apart, and Kara tried to tell herself it wasn't guilt. She was married to Lee, after all. They hadn't gone and announced it to anyone, and under the circumstances, they couldn't—stupid frakking regs—but what she'd done wasn't wrong, not really.

“Who's going to clean that up?” Adama asked, and Kara realized that somewhere in their kiss, they'd overturned the paint. She pointed to Lee. He pointed back at her, and they both laughed. Adama shook his head at both of them.

* * *

“Oh, gods,” Kara whispered, looking at the mess and unable to understand what she was seeing. Those were her friends. Her fellow pilots. They'd all survived the end of the worlds and two hundred thirty-eight Cylon attacks together, and they died like this?

Un-frakking-believeable.

Lee's eyes were full of the same disbelief, but somewhere in the middle of it, their hands had found each other's, and Kara was afraid to let go. If they'd been a little earlier, if she hadn't kissed him and he'd been on time—would he be dead, too?

* * *

Lee made it through his ready room briefing somehow, not sure how to face his pilots again. He didn't have half the room, and it hurt. He didn't know their names, and he felt guilty as hell. He didn't know what to do. He hadn't had speeches during the thirty-three minute cycle, and he didn't have them now. He was a mess, and so was everyone else.

No, everyone else hadn't been kissing their brother's widow and wife at the time when others were dying.

He was about to give in when his father came in and stole the podium. A part of him was grateful. A part of him hated the man for it. This was _his_ responsibility, and Lee was the one who needed to do it, not his father. If the pilots couldn't depend on their CAG, they couldn't do their jobs.

Which was another reason he shouldn't be in this position, but he was.

* * *

“Your father's going to ask me to train new pilots.”

“I know.”

Red paint was still in Kara's hair, but neither of them wanted to acknowledge that. They were supposed to be dressing for the funeral. Lee didn't know why he wasn't, why he'd stopped, except that he was aware of her also in the room. He couldn't help that sense. He didn't know if it was wariness or want or just another heavy load of guilt.

“I can't, Lee. You know what I did,” Kara said, and Lee stopped, staring at her. “I _killed_ Zak. I passed him when I shouldn't have, and I can't do this again. I transferred for a reason. I—I can't do this. I won't.”

“Dad won't accept that,” Lee said, feeling stupid and stumbling over his own tongue. “I... We... I can't even schedule a CAP right now. We're too short-handed. I don't... We have to have people.”

“So you want me to do this.”

“I...” Lee swallowed. He didn't want to answer that. And he hated seeing her like this. Raw. Vulnerable. He wanted to take her into his arms and hold her. He should, as her husband, as the man who was supposed to be there for her, and he couldn't. He was supposed to be the CAG and her superior officer, and their relationship wasn't like that except they'd kissed and everything was frakked up, and he couldn't even _think_ around her right now. “I'll _need_ you to do it. I don't want to ask. I don't want... I can't do this now.”

“Lee—”

“Kara, please,” he said, strained beyond his pathetic limits now. “We... We'll talk after the funeral. I promise.”

* * *

Adama got to her before Lee did, and in part she was relieved and in part terrified. She knew Lee assumed that she'd already told his father what she'd done, but she hadn't. Adama didn't know she'd passed Zak and caused his death. And he damned sure didn't know she'd married Lee afterward.

“I have to start training new pilots.”

“There it is. I... um... I kind of thought this was about that,” she said, looking over at him. “Um, I don't think I'm the right person for this.”

“You know someone better?”

_Anyone,_ she thought. “No, but... um... there's almost fifty thousand people out there. Trying to tell me there's not a flight instructor?”

“Two. Civilians both. I need someone to teach combat tactics.”

“You know, I'm not sure I'd be of any use to you. I wasn't the most patient—”

“Let's get down to it. This is about Zak. That wasn't your fault. It was an accident. You had nothing to do with it. Zak passed basic flight. He was trained and ready to sit in that cockpit. What happened to him could have happened to any qualified pilot. You know that's true.”

She didn't. It wasn't right. It wasn't an accident. She swallowed, trying to tell Adama that, but her mouth didn't seem to work.

“You did your job to the best of your ability. That's all I can ask. I need new pilots, and I want you to train them.”

“I can do that,” she said. Frak. That should have been can't. _Say it. Say you passed Zak when he wasn't ready and you don't have the right to train anyone again, ever. Murderer._

“Just give them the same attention and professionalism you gave my son, and they'll be one hell of a squadron.”

She nodded, lied, and got the frak out of there.

* * *

Lee found her pilots, and she didn't know if she hated him for it or not.

She took them through the motions, but that was all it was—the motions. She couldn't do this. She'd get them all killed. After watching them almost die doing something as simple as landing, she failed them all. It was over.

They tried to argue. She heard Zak and refused to listen.

* * *

“Kara, you can't do this,” Lee said when he confronted her. “You can't wash them out on their first day.”

“I just did.”

“I have forty Vipers and twenty-one pilots. We are sitting ducks until we finish water ops. We can't even set up a CAP,” he reminded her, but she didn't care. “Gods forbid the Cylons show up—”

“Gods forbid. Bring up the next batch of candidates.”

“The next ones have never even been in a cockpit before.”

“Well, then, they start basic flight because that group is done. It says so right there,” she said, pointing to her report. “Maybe you should read it again.”

“Lieutenant Thrace, this is not a request.”

She couldn't believe he was trying to pull rank on her. Not now. He knew better than that. So much for the support he'd promised. “Well, _Captain_ Adama, I am the flight instructor, sir. My word is scripture, sir—”

“You didn't even _want_ to be the flight instructor,” he reminded her, and she glared at him. “You can't sabotage them by not even giving them a chance.” 

“I will not, repeat, not pass another student who isn't ready.”

Lee shook his head. “You can't make this about Zak, Kara.”

“Then who should I make it about, Lee? You?” Kara demanded, getting in his face. Gods, she almost could. She could grab hold of him and start something right here, like she had in the bunkroom. “I tried to talk to you about this once. You shot me down, remember?”

He swallowed. “This isn't about us, either. Don't twist it into something it isn't.”

She yanked him close for a kiss, one less fun and playful than before, more harsh and demanding and laced with layers on layers of guilt. He pulled back, shaking his head. She could see it. The denial going through his mind, the way he was talking himself out of everything.

“We are not doing this,” he said. “Reinstate them. Now.”

“No.”

“Kara—”

“Don't make me hit you, Lee.”

He snorted. “Why shouldn't I? Maybe you'd keep it above the belt this time.”

She opened her mouth to object, but he brushed past her, leaving the room. She wanted to be angry, and she was, but not at him. At herself, again, for frakking it up.

* * *

Lee tried to prepare himself for his next visit, knowing what he had to do. He didn't want to have to take it to his father—it showed again that he couldn't control his own pilots or himself, and he didn't want to have his father bail him out of anything, but he knew he didn't trust himself when it came to Kara. She'd been different since he said he was going to Elosha and almost annulled the marriage, actually acting like she did, in fact, need him as she claimed, but that didn't make any of this easier.

It made it worse.

He entered his father's quarters and tried to tell himself he was doing the right thing. “Sir, I've come about the new nugget class. Kara washed them out already and—”

“If Starbuck says they can't cut it, they can't cut it,” his father told him, sounding convinced. Lee didn't understand. How could his father be so sure?

“She's not giving them a chance, it's day one.”

“She's one of the finest pilots I've ever seen in my life. If one day in the cockpit is all she needs to know if they're gonna hack it or not, she got that.”

“I'm not arguing that, sir,” Lee said because he couldn't deny that Kara was good or that her instincts were, but he didn't think this had anything to do with her skill. “I'm just saying I think she's letting her personal feelings cloud her judgment.”

“Please, sit down, Captain,” his father said, looking like he might offer Lee a drink. He could use one right about now. “And what are those feelings?”

“About Zak,” Lee answered. _And me. I don't even have the first clue what she feels about me._

“We've talked about that.”

“You—you did?” Lee grimaced at his own tone. He didn't know why. It wasn't like he'd said the part about himself out loud.

“We talked about a lot of things. We've been aboard this ship for over two years, we know each other very well. When I asked her to be the instructor, I knew it was gonna release a lot of loose baggage. She acknowledged it. She's a professional, she'll do her job.”

Lee didn't know what delusional planet his father was living on, but it wasn't the ship they were standing on right now. “You should talk to her. She's not professional. She's a mess.”

“Starbuck is always a bit of a mess. It's part of her charm.”

“Not like this,” Lee insisted, getting his father to frown at him. He almost blurted it out then, the whole sordid saga of their marriage, but he didn't. It was in name only, and it wasn't like it might not disappear as soon as Kara tired of whatever game this was she was playing.

“I'll talk to her.”

“Good,” Lee said, turning to leave and then stopping. He couldn't not say something. “I think she's trying to work out her guilt over what she did for Zak. I think she's trying to make up for it by beating up on these guys.”

“Guilt? Over what? What did she do for Zak?”

Lee wasn't sure if his father knew about any of it. Even if he was only in the dark about the marriage, he wasn't going to say it. Kara knew what she'd told the commander before. She could fix this mess herself. Served her right for flunking out the trainees without giving them a chance. “I—I thought you just said—”

“What did she do?”

“It's not my place to say,” Lee said, though that was the coward's way out and one of these days he would have to admit to marrying his brother's widow, “and I've already said more than I should've. You'll have to ask her, I'm sorry.”

“Captain, just—”

“Dad, you'll have to ask her.”

* * *

“Lee was just here before.”

“I knew it.” She'd known as soon as Lee left where he would go, and she'd been sure of it when she got paged to the commander's quarters. She should hate him for this. Typical Lee, running to Daddy.

Only that wasn't fair, and it wasn't true, either. She knew Lee had never gone running to his father for anything, and this wasn't any different. He used to get so sick of the assumption that he was only there on his father's merits, not his own. She'd seen the way he'd reacted when his father took over the briefing in the ready room, and she didn't think he just shoved this at his father because he didn't want it.

He did it because things were way too frakked up between the two of them right now.

“He thinks you washed out the nuggets without giving them a chance.”

She straightened her back, defensive. “They didn't cut it, that's it.”

“He thought you were letting personal feelings cloud your judgment.”

“And Lee isn't?” She snorted.

“I don't know what feelings Lee has to confuse the issue. Yours, though—he believes your feelings about Zak are influencing your decision.”

“It's not the case.”

“It better not be,” Adama said, a warning in his tone, and she knew, again, that she wouldn't want to say anything about the whole marriage fiasco. “He said something else. He said something that I would like to ask you directly. He said that you might have been feeling guilty about something that you did for Zak. What did you do for him?”

“I don't know,” she said. She didn't want to say it, and she didn't want to admit to what she'd done, drunkenly, after Zak died. “You'd have to ask Lee.”

“I'm asking you.”

“Well, I don't, um, I don't really know what he was talking about, so...”

Adama shook his head, disappointment clear in his face. “Don't fence with me, Kara. I love you like a daughter, I don't deserve that.”

She swallowed, trying to make herself do it, finally. She had no choice. Lee had forced the issue, so did the commander, and she couldn't live with it anymore. She couldn't. “Um... Zak... failed basic flight. He wasn't a bad pilot; he just had no feel for flying. And, um, when it came to his final check ride he busted three of the test maneuvers and I should have flunked him, but I didn't. The bottom line is that your son didn't have the chops to fly a Viper... and it killed him.”

“You did it because you were engaged.”

That wasn't an excuse. She'd always known that. “Because I made a mistake. Because I was—I was so in love with him and... and I let that get in the way of doing my job. And, um, he, um—he just wanted it so much and I—I didn't want to be the one who crushed him.”

Adama's voice was cold. Gods, he hated her. He was right to, but she'd feared that all this time. “Reinstate the trainees to flight status.”

“I will, I, uh... but I just want you to understand that I—”

“Do your job.”

He really did hate her. He would never forgive her. And Lee wouldn't, either. “Yes, sir.”

“And walk out of this cabin while you still can.”

She didn't walk. She ran.

* * *

Lee knew Kara was back with the nuggets. He wanted to tell her that he thought she was a good teacher, but she was going out of her way to avoid him since he forced her into the confrontation with his father. He didn't know where they stood, but they weren't going to sort it out like this.

He didn't know that they'd ever sort out their mess, and he wasn't sure he wanted to keep fighting with her. He wished she'd just cut him loose. He didn't understand why she was holding onto him like she was.

He stood in the CIC, next to Tigh while he made obnoxious comments, but his mind was elsewhere, trying to sort out what he felt and what the frak he was going to do about it. He was considering going back to Elosha, even if Kara said she needed him.

“Holy frak, we've got incoming! Where the hell did they come from?”

His head jerked up when he heard Kara's voice.

“Dradis, multiple contacts...” Gaeta reported. “It's the Cylons.”

Tigh tensed. “Why didn't we see them coming?”

“Launch the Alert fighters,” his father ordered, and Lee almost cursed himself for not doing it first. That should have been his order, not his father's.

Tigh picked up the comm. “Set condition one throughout the fleet.”

_“Galactica,”_ Kara said over the line, “we're gonna need you to send the cavalry. Nuggets, punch it for home.”

“Where's the base ship?” Tigh demanded, watching the dradis screen.

“Uh, no base ships detected, sir,” Gaeta said. “Eight Raiders, bearing zero-four-seven, carom one-one-eight, range twenty-two thousand.”

“They found us,” Tigh whispered. “It was only a matter of time.”

Kara's voice came over the line again, showing annoyance and fear. _“Galactica,_ Starbuck... where the hell are the Alert fighters?”

“Starbuck, Alert one. Be there in two minutes.”

“The Cylons are gaining,” Gaeta said, and Lee thought he sounded worried. Maybe he should be. None of the nuggets had seen combat, and Lee wasn't part of the alert fighters. If he was, maybe everyone would feel better about it. He sure as frak did.

“All right, listen up, nuggets,” Kara ordered. “Stay together and keep your throttles firewalled until you hit that deck. Now go.”

His father leaned forward to get a better look at the dradis. “What is she doing?”

“Starbuck's gonna take on all eight,” Tigh muttered. “Get herself killed.”

Lee heard the chatter continuing, but he didn't process any of it. Not after what Tigh just said. He turned to Dee. “Get me a line to Starbuck. Now.”

He was aware of his father's eyes on him, but he ignored it as he accepted the headset from her, putting it to his ear. “Starbuck, Apollo. Break off and head back. Now.”

“There's only one left,” she said. “He's right on my tail, but I've got it covered.”

“Break off,” Lee repeated. “Kara, you don't have to do this. Not for Zak. Not for my dad. Not even for this mess that's between us. It's not worth your life.”

Silence. Lee's stomach churned, and he looked up at the dradis, having his fears confirmed.

“Starbuck's wireless and transponder just cut out.”

Lee dropped the headset and left the CIC.


End file.
